Alabama Exceptionalism
This college football season will be surely be remembered for a lot of off-the-field events including the sex abuse scandal at Penn State. It may also be remembered for the dominating defensive effort by Alabama in its championship game shutout of LSU. But it is quite possible that the 2011 season will be recalled as the year the scales finally tipped in the favor of a championship playoff. Controversy over an all-SEC rematch in the title game and the exclusion of a number of one-loss teams from BCS title consideration have increased calls for a “plus-one” or larger playoff.
Indeed, a recent ESPN poll found that 94 percent of respondents favored a playoff to determine the college football national champion, and over 60 percent thought the playoff should include more than four teams.
The state that was the most anti-playoff? Alabama, home of the last three national champions (Alabama, Auburn, Alabama). Respondents from the Yellowhammer State rejected the need for a playoff at the highest rate in the nation. And Alabama was one of only two states (along with Alaska, which had a tiny sample size) whose residents preferred the smaller of the options.
Alabama (and most SEC states, to a lesser extent) also felt that the current system of team ranking is just fine.
The logic inherent in these polls seems clear - the current BCS system has worked well for the state, so why mess with success? One wonders, of course, whether Alabamians would have answered differently had Oklahoma State edged the Tide for the second spot in the title game.
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